Under Solaris, how can I get the NIC in and out bytes?

Question

Under Solaris, how can I get the NIC in and out bytes just like in Linux where I can use cat /proc/net/dev to pick data two times then compute the difference ?

Answer 1

You can use kstat, passing the name of your interface, eg:

kstat -n qfe3 1 2 | egrep "snaptime|64"
        ipackets64                      7661398
        obytes64                        1483251857
        opackets64                      6584034
        rbytes64                        4540752924
        snaptime                        5803795.88609375
        ipackets64                      7661404
        obytes64                        1483252829
        opackets64                      6584040
        rbytes64                        4540753320
        snaptime                        5803796.92155328

Here the interval is one second (1.03545953 precisely), obytes shows the outgoing bytes and rbytes the incoming ones.

Make sure to pick the right interface, eg:

$ uname -a
SunOS s10u10.local.net 5.10 Generic_147441-23 i86pc i386 i86pc
$ ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=2001000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4,VIRTUAL> mtu 8232 index 1
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
e1000g0: flags=1004843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,DHCP,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 2
        inet 10.0.2.15 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 10.0.2.255
e1000g0:100: flags=1000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 2
        inet 192.168.10.254 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.10.255
e1000g1: flags=1000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 3
        inet 192.168.56.2 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.56.255
$ kstat -n e1000g1 | egrep "64|snaptime"
        ipackets64                      82
        obytes64                        840
        opackets64                      14
        rbytes64                        15792
        snaptime                        1600.258974202

Answer 2

Give Tim Cook's nicstat a try: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nicstat/

    Time      Int   rKB/s   wKB/s   rPk/s   wPk/s    rAvs    wAvs %Util    Sat
02:02:23      lo0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  0.00   0.00
02:02:23     net4    0.95   21.06   11.00    4.00   88.36  5393.0  0.02   0.00
02:02:23     net1    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  0.00   0.00
02:02:23     net0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  0.00   0.00
    Time      Int   rKB/s   wKB/s   rPk/s   wPk/s    rAvs    wAvs %Util    Sat
02:02:24      lo0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  0.00   0.00
02:02:24     net4    0.29    0.06    5.00    1.00   60.00   66.00  0.00   0.00
02:02:24     net1    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  0.00   0.00
02:02:24     net0    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  0.00   0.00